Fresh & Easy: “We’re not going away”

Shoppers use the Fresh & Easy store on Third St. in San Francisco. (Sarah Rice / Special to the Chronicle)

Last month, when we reported the U.K.-owned small format grocery chain was “conducting a strategic review” of its U.S. business, we figured that didn’t bode too well for the 19 Fresh & Easy stores in the Bay Area.

Well, shoppers in San Francisco’s Bayview, Richmond and Portola districts, and elsewhere, don’t despair. According to a note sent by the company to its “Friends” (folks who signed up for Fresh & Easy’s rewards program) this morning, “We want to assure you: we don’t have plans to close stores.” In fact, there are “even more exciting things to come.”

The note didn’t say whether those things to come included another chain — like Walmart — taking over the stores, though it did say parent company, Tesco (currently caught up in a horsemeat scandal at home), is “looking at all options to find the best outcome for the neighborhood market … We don’t know exactly what that outcome will be, or if Tesco will continue to own the company.”